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Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona talks to reporters after addressing residents of Fleet Landing, a life-care community with many retired military residents, in Atlantic Beach, Florida. (AP Photo/The Florida Times-Union, Bob Self)

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has riled both parties by charging that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) approached him about joining the Democratic presidential ticket in 2004.

Now, the assertion has drawn a detailed rebuttal by top McCain aides, who consider the charge a bid for attention by Kerry.

They contend that Kerry pursued the maverick McCain repeatedly but was rebuffed decisively on each approach. “Each conversation, McCain would say, ‘No, John, no,’ and raise objections,” said Mark Salter, who was McCain’s Senate chief of staff then and now is senior adviser to his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

“Then, Kerry would say, ‘Would you just please do me a favor? Will you listen to my pitch if I come back to you with another idea?’” Salter said. “McCain just said, ‘It’s not going to work.’ And then Kerry would come back with preposterous ideas, essentially turning over the national security part of the presidency to McCain.”

Kerry made the comments Monday in Portland, Ore., during an interview with Jonathan Singer of MyDD.com, one of the most prominent liberal blogs, which posted audio of the exchange on Tuesday.

Singer asked Kerry about a report in The Hill newspaper last week that McCain had talked to Democratic senators about leaving the Republican Party in 2001.

According to MyDD, Kerry told Singer: “It doesn't surprise me completely, because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as vice president. So his people were active – let's put it that way.”

Singer, one of four front-page MyDD writers, followed up: “OK. And just to confirm, you said it, but this is something they approached you rather than...”

“Absolutely correct,” Kerry replied, naming “John Weaver of his shop,” a reference to McCain’s longtime chief political strategist. Then, Kerry was interrupted by a phone call.

Kerry was in Seattle Tuesday promoting his new book, “This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future,” which he wrote with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Kerry’s deputy chief of staff, David Wade, did not dispute the senator’s comments but did not elaborate.

“No surprise,” Wade said, “I’m not going to discuss the vice presidential vetting process of 2004, and I’m not going to comment on any private conversations John Kerry had with his colleagues.”

Salter, who is co-author of four best-selling books with McCain, said he’d always been a little reticent to discuss the matter because of McCain’s friendship with Kerry. But pressed by The Politico to give his account, Salter said Kerry asked McCain about joining his ticket two or three times, always couching the matter hypothetically: “Say I were to offer you this, would you be interested?”

“Kerry called me in the middle of the night, when I was asleep,” Salter recalled, “and said, ‘Did I wake you up?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And then he proceeded to talk for 20 minutes, saying, ‘Could you talk to John? Could you get him to consider this? I think it would work, Mark.’ And it was always, ‘Let me put this hypothetically, so I can always say it was never offered if John continues to refuse.’ That was the phrase he used: ‘continues to refuse.’ And I said, ‘OK, senator.’ And at the end, ‘Hypothetically, then, I don’t think this would work.’ That’s the fact. McCain approached nobody. We didn’t spend 10 seconds – anybody in McCain world – considering the pros and cons of it. It was rejected out of hand every time.”

Salter said that when the issue of the president and vice president sharing national security responsibilities came up, “McCain told me he said, ‘John, one, constitutionally, I don’t think you can do that. But having said that, you and I don’t agree on North Korea. Were I to do this, whose position is going to prevail – mine or yours? We don’t agree on much, John. I like you, we’re friends. You did a good job on the POW committee, but we see the world differently. I’m a Republican, you’re a Democrat. There are reasons we can’t do this.’ And then Kerry would say, ‘Well, I’m not asking you to leave the party.’”

Weaver, McCain’s strategist, said the Arizona senator had never seriously considered leaving the Republican Party, as some current and past Democratic senators now suggest. Weaver said the reports may stem from a meeting that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) sought with McCain.

“John went to the meeting,” Weaver said. “There was a group of senators in there. He went into the meeting. They made their pitch: ‘John, will you switch?’ I don’t think they got into details of switching independent or switching Democrat. He just came back and laughed it off. He didn’t go to a meeting knowing that was the purpose. There were no negotiations.”

Weaver also denied that McCain had entertained running with Kerry.

“Kerry asked for a meeting with Sen. McCain in late July of 2003,” Weaver recalled. “The two had breakfast. At that time, he was not doing well in the Democratic primary and he needed a jolt. He asked the senator to consider being his running mate and announcing it in the primaries. John laughed it off and told him, ‘No.’”

“After Kerry secured the nomination,” Weaver said, “he reached out to Mark Salter and reached out to the senator numerous times. He had fallen in love with a concept that was so impossible to consider that it’s hard to imagine how someone could have come up with it.”